St. Louis Cardinals: Departed Players Are NOT Better

The St. Louis Cardinals allowed a few players to walk this offseason and traded others away.  As we reach the close of spring, there are many who are disappointed with the Cardinals performance, but are those departed players any better?

Players come and players go and this offseason was a busy one for the St. Louis Cardinals.  While we are told to read nothing into spring training statistics, this year’s club seems to continue its lackluster performance of old leading many to issue concern.  In thinking this way, one might easily fall prey to the thought that those departed players may well be out-performing this year’s squad, but is this a fallacy?

If we are going to examine this fallacy- which it surely is a fallacy- then we ought to compare the performance of the departed players to those who the Cardinals have kept on the squad and/or gained through the departures.

And, since we are told to read nothing into spring stats, we should compare these players using those stats to which nothing should be read.  At least in doing so, we will be comparing the same faulty statistics.

A further note about the stats to be used for comparison, for comparison ease I will focus these side-by-sides looking exclusively at offensive numbers with the exception of pitchers.  I will not examine defensive.

Why might you ask?  All the current complaints against the 2016 Cardinals seem to be circulating around the idea of another lame offensive year– so let’s see if the organization has reason to regret these lost players.

Moving one step beyond the statistical comparison, we should also look to see if we can predict whether the departed players will break camp with the MLB squad.  I mention this because I anticipate that some will not be set to break camp or even to make the active roster of their new landing spots.

Sit back and enjoy this rollercoaster ride through remaining and departed players.

Next: Pete Kozma